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Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Inequality: The acid breaking down society

Below are links to the talks and work of Richard Wilkinson, including an article that I'm re-posting from Rabble.ca. He has studied the corrosive effects of inequality for decades and has discovered that great inequality results in an increase of most of the social and mental ills in our world. There seems to be a direct correlation between income concentration and the breakdown of society. Very much worth checking out.

Greater equality is better for everyone: Richard Wilkinson

By Michael Shapcott

| December 14, 2010

Call it Unequal Canada -- the national tour. British
professor and epidemiologist Richard Wilkinson has packed his first
visit to Canada with public meetings, and private sessions with senior
government officials and community leaders. His message is powerful, yet
simple: Greater equality is better for everyone.

"It's not just the poor, but everyone is worse off in unequal
societies," said Canadian statesman Ed Broadbent as he introduced
Wilkinson for his sold-out Toronto presentation on Dec. 10. "More
equality, not more growth, matters."

Wilkinson delivers the equality message in a quiet manner, filling
the screen with slides that track the relationship between equality and
health and social issues in dozens of countries around the world,
including Canada. He has authored numerous books and scholarly articles,
including his latest, The Spirit Level, which has sold more than 100,000 copies.

He doesn't just theorize about issues. Along with his co-author Kate Pickett, he has created the Equality Trust, which maintains an active on-line campaigning presence.

While he has the air of an unassuming academic, Wilkinson has been
the target of a concerted campaign by a handful of right-wing interests
who are seeking to blunt his work. Britain is one of the most unequal
countries in his international survey (the United States is consistently
the worst), and the current coalition government's attacks on community
and social programs is sure to make a bad situation worse.

Wilkinson and Pickett's scattergraphs have become very political in
the U.K. They challenge the dominant political ideology that cutting the
deficit by slashing social and community initiatives is the only, and
the best, policy option.

Canada ranks roughly in the middle of Wilkinson's global ranking, but
he delivers an important warning: Much of his data was collected
several years ago as he was preparing his manuscript, and more recent
numbers show that Canada is moving quickly towards greater inequality.
Other international surveys, including the Organisation for Economic
Co-operation and Development's 2008 report called Growing Unequal
confirm growing inequality in Canada.

As an epidemiologist, Wilkinson has collected a large amount of
social, health and economic data from a number of countries. Some
countries, and some regions within countries, suffer a higher burden of
poor health, obesity, teenage pregnancies, violent crime and other key
indicators. The big question is why the national and regional
differences.

Income alone doesn't explain the variations. Some countries have
lower average incomes than others, but there is no scientifically valid
relationship between national income and the index of social /health
issues.

The only factor that helps explain the differences is inequality.
More unequal countries have higher rates of mental illness, drug abuse
and lower life expectancy -- to name just three of the many variables
that Wilkinson tracks. The social and health outcomes are not just
different between the very rich and the very poor in unequal societies,
but right along the income spectrum.

The gradient is a key part of Wilkinson's analysis: It's not just the
poor who suffer from inequality. "Almost everyone benefits from greater
equality," says Wilkinson, pointing out that even those at the top in
an unequal country like the U.S. suffer worst outcomes than their
counterparts in the more equal Nordic countries.

While many people believe that absolute deprivation is the dominant
concern, Wilkinson says that in wealthy countries like Canada, the U.S.
and Britain, it is relative poverty as measured by inequality that is
the critical factor.

Why is inequality so important? Wilkinson points to three factors
that lead to chronic stress which is, in turn, a key driver in affecting
personal and population health: low social status, weak social
affiliation and stress in early life. Chronic stress is more than a
fleeting sense of unease. Wilkinson points to specific physiological
changes linked to stress.
Using internationally comparable data to build the evidentiary base
to demonstrate that inequality is not only bad for the poor, but for
everyone, Wilkinson notes that there are two key ways to reduce
inequality and improve population health: at the front end by increasing
incomes, or at the back end through taxes and transfers.

He ended his Toronto presentation by calling on the 300-plus people
in the standing-room only crowd to campaign for "income democracy" and
increased democracy in the workplace.

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About Me

The Pündi are a race from my fantasy novels, the Continuum Chronicles, an exploration of spiritual evolution theory. Appearing like us, they are really child-sized aliens cursed by their own intelligence, trapped as observers unable to share their knowledge. They often develop an individual obsessive interest.

I write and publish, not selling anything, just trying to share ideas that might profit everyone. I aim not for originality but creativity, organizing what exists to generate new associations. I'm a writer with thick glasses and autism, familiar with the struggle for clarity. Novelist, researcher, internet activist, spiritual evolutionist, and process philosopher, I believe in democratic social capitalism with a well-regulated engine of sustainable markets. As a writer, I find that most blockages tend to be improvements trying to occur to me.